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Speaking at NDC 2011

It has been an absolute an utter blast being part of this conference. The experience has been way better than last year’s and I suspect that being at the other side of the stage has had a lot to do with the result.

Despite some bad omen previous to the beginning of the conference I arrived in Oslo (via Copenhagen and, surprisingly, Aalborg) safe and ready to charge the batteries for a busy first day of the conference.

Learn Your Tools. NUnit

Right after a pretty unexciting Keynote I headed towards my room to be surprised by more attendees than I expected would show up. The numbers were not too bad for a topic that sounds like old news and was sharing slot with speakers of the caliber of Robert “Uncle Bob” Martin, Billy Hollis, Kevlin Henney and Damien Edwards. phew!

My sweaty hands lasted around a minute-and-a-half, as once it starts rolling, it rolls. Personally I was pretty content with the delivery, despite being a tough format (pre-canned code) to make it entertaining as I finished with my content right in time. Being a shy attendance, I took a couple of questions off-line that made my day. It is difficult to express the warm feeling one get when someone approaches you asking for more detail or in this case a mere “Man, I did not know I could do that with xxx, and I had been using it for years now”. Even if it was for just one person (which it wasn’t) I consider that a “mission accomplished”.

If you, reader, were there or you just want to have a peek, here you have the lean slide-deck and the more meaty code.

S.O.L.I.D Principles

I was already pumped up from the previous talk so I barely realized that the room was waaay more crowded. That only means that good design techniques are something that people want to know more about. And that is all good.

A single Prezi. No code. Blinding lights. A couple of chains to support a dangling stage floating tenths of meters above the hard floor. One sweaty man speaking his way out of his mess. A happy bunch trying to make any sense of it.

Man, that was serious FUN. I finished a bit early despite people being dare enough to ask a couple of interesting questions, which was not too bad as lunch was ready by that time. But I did not go for it. Instead I engaged in a really good conversation with an attendee (Uncle Bob, you might have another buyer of your book). That, again, left me really happy and pleased to have helped someone to investigate further in something I really believe is important and in exchange I got invaluable feedback if I ever present the same topic again.

Being with the Smart Guys

When the first day of conference finished I was not done with it, good was still to come. The organization organized an event for the speakers to socialize.

It’s hard to keep it cool and not acting like a groupie when you are sharing table with some of the most brilliant minds of the industry. People you read, deeply respect and would be in posters in your room (OK, I got a bit carried away here) acting like… well… common people: drinking, laughing, discussing and being loud. I was relieved to see Jon Skeet pouring some human food down his throat. I knew all this time that he is a very advanced replicant

It really rises your game engaging into conversations with people of such caliber. But I have to tell you. The saying in my country is right: “Everything is contagious, except beauty”. And I must add: “…and being clever”.

Wrap-up

I do not know the ratings of the sessions, but I would lie saying I do not care. Two reasons for that:

I care of what I do. I want it to be good and useful. I want to transmit to people even just a fraction of my excitement when talking about the things I believe are worth talking about.

I definitely want to be back at the NDC. What an amazing conference it is. The secret? It has to be people (speaker AND attendees), because I refuse to believe that shitty rainy weather can bring more than 1500 people from all over the globe.